The Derby Girl Read online

  Relief swept a clearing path through him. This was okay. This he could work with.

  “I was doing you a favor, believe me. Dr. and Mrs. Robinson are nice enough people, but they have to be the dullest, most superficial couple on the planet. I was lucky to escape before she started telling me about her prize gladioli.”

  He thought the joke would help, but Gretchen kept staring at his head like it was sprouting, well, another head.

  “I don’t actually want to meet them,” she said tightly.

  “Good. So we’re on the same page?” They didn’t look on the same page. They didn’t even look in the same library.

  Gretchen threw up her hands. “I swear, it’s like I’m talking to a child here. It’s rude, Jared, to not introduce your date to people, and it made me feel about two inches tall. I’m not asking for much here. You didn’t have to call me your date. You could have called me your friend or your sister or a strange, mutant convict you picked up in the alleyway.”

  “I don’t think they’d have believed that second one.”

  She stared so hard he felt a laser might have appeared in the center of his forehead. “That’s not the point. The point is that you saw those people, made a judgment about me and blazed right on ahead like none of it mattered. Maybe I like gladioli. Maybe she likes roller derby. Maybe we were destined to become great friends.”

  That seemed like an awful lot to extract from a five-minute interaction with people he didn’t even like, but the edge in Gretchen’s voice was a clear sign he’d struck a nerve.

  “You’re absolutely right.” He took her arm and gave it a gentle tug. “Let’s go find them. I’ll introduce you.”

  She shook him off and rolled her eyes. “You’re doing it again. Just stop. Breathe.”

  “I am breathing.”

  “Then count to twenty or something. I don’t know—I’m not a professional at handling pigheaded men.” She blinked expectantly, but he didn’t know what to say or do to make this okay so he remained silent. That seemed safest. “You have no idea, do you? Okay, Jared—it’s simple. Ask first.”

  “Would you...” Ask what, exactly? “Forgive me?”

  “Close, but not quite.”

  “Would you...” He’d graduated top of his class. Never failed a test in his life. “Like to go back and meet the Robinsons?”

  She clapped, and he felt an absurd burst of pride at the sound of it. “No, but thank you for asking.”

  “So...” He looked around, searching for the trap. “That’s all?”

  “Being a decent person isn’t hard. All you have to do is extend a little effort.”

  Jared couldn’t help but wonder at the simplicity of it all. He acted like a boor. She called him out on it. He fixed it. Less than ten minutes when all was said and done, and neither of them any worse for wear.

  Could it be this easy? Was life really just a matter of someone telling him when he was being an asshole so he could stop? And where had Gretchen been the past twenty years or so? Think of all the terrible mistakes he could have avoided if only he had this good angel perched on his shoulder the whole time.

  But then she smiled up at him, a mischievous glint in her eyes, and he suspected that she might also be the devil on his shoulder. “There’s one more question I have yet to hear you ask.”

  Can I see your tattoo now? seemed a bit preemptive, given the circumstances, so he fell back on the standard, “When can I see you again? Preferably with sandwiches?”

  “Well, I don’t know, Jared.” She tipped her head to the side. “When would you like to see me again?”

  Tomorrow. The day after that. All the days after. “How’s next Friday?”

  She paused, and he thought for a moment that he was about to be shut down, that he’d pushed too hard, screwed up too bad.

  “I wish I could, but I have roller derby that night.”

  “Roller derby?” Images of Gretchen at the mercy of strangely overgrown Amazonian women flashed through his mind. Of Gretchen in athletic gear skating in circles. Yes. In addition to the strong protective instinct she’d elicited the night they met, he found himself growing aroused at the images conjured up by his imagination.

  It was probably a bit preemptive to bring that up too.

  “Can I come?” he asked instead, trying to play it cool and failing miserably.

  She stopped, a smile held in check by the press of her teeth on her lower lip. “Really? You’d come all the way out to Philadelphia to watch me play? What with your roaring fan club of elderly gladiolus-loving friends to account for?”

  “Are you kidding?” Unable to stop himself, he reached out and grazed her cheek with his forefinger. “I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.”

  She released the smile, beaming at him with such force there was no question of her joy. He’d done that. He’d given her that. He wasn’t sure he’d ever felt that powerful before.

  “I’d love it.” She laughed up at him. “Maybe I’ll even grab you a T-shirt ahead of time. You can wear my colors.”

  “What are your colors?”

  She yanked his arm as they headed back into the theater. Apparently they were seeing this date through to the end, and he couldn’t be more elated at the prospect. The second chances kept pouring off this woman—he could practically bathe in them, awash in redemption.

  “My colors?” Gretchen laughed and pushed him toward their seats. “Black and blue. Naturally.”

  Chapter Seven

  “I can’t believe you’re selling your car.” Whitney shook her head as she and Jared pulled in to the hospital parking garage, the pair of them squeezed into the bucket seats of his Ferrari. “It’s like the end of an era.”

  As part of their agreement with the city of Pleasant Park, he and Whitney put in regular volunteer hours at the local hospital. Usually they were there to lend credibility and do consultations, but they sometimes got into the operating room, as was the case with Jared’s pro bono burn reconstruction the other day.

  It felt a bit like old times—he and Whitney, side by side, doing actual good in the world. Maybe it was the combination of those things that made him feel so nostalgic. The car, the work, the woman he’d once planned on spending his life with. He wasn’t normally so morose on the cusp of a big surgery.

  “Yeah, well.” He put the car in park. “It’s kind of dated, don’t you think?”

  “You? Or the car?”

  “Both, unfortunately.” Blame the town, blame Gretchen, blame his return to the real world—he was rapidly coming to realize that everything about him was a walking throwback to the Good Old Boys Club. “As I’d like to move away from being considered a miniature replica of my father, selling the car seems like a good first step.”

  “You could always just stop being an ass.”

  “Baby steps, Whitney. Baby steps. Besides—you know me. Always taking the easy way out.”

  “Right. Because you’ve always been such a slacker.” She tossed him his bag from the back seat and moved in a clipped pace toward the doctor’s entrance. “Your personality leaves room for improvement in almost every other respect, but hard work isn’t one of them. In fact, I’m surprised you don’t plan on donating the damn car to orphans or taking it apart piece by piece so you can build a soup kitchen from the parts. Just imagine the publicity.”

  “I’m not that bad.” He jogged to keep up. “I haven’t done a single charitable action all day. You should be proud.”

  “You’re here, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, but you are too. Your evil intentions negate any of my good ones.”

  Whitney laughed, and Jared found himself mesmerized by the sound of it, at how differently it affected him than the light trill that spilled so easily from Gretchen’s lips. Once upon a time, Whitney’s laugh had pl
ayed an integral role in his life—was a piece of the puzzle in his own happiness.

  Strange how time could change things. He would always consider Whitney his friend, always be glad to hear her laughter, but no part of him resided inside that sound anymore. No part of him hinged on its existence.

  As Whitney pushed open the door, she was met by a tall redheaded woman who looked an awful lot like a hospital administrator—holding a clipboard, dressed to impress in a well-cut suit, a pinched expression on her face that was probably supposed to pass for a smile.

  Jared wasn’t a big fan of administrators. He suspected it had something to do with the fact they were either praising him to the skies or putting every obstacle they could in his way. It was never the middle road with these people.

  “Dr. Fine?” the woman asked, flicking her gaze over him. From the way her lips pulled down in the corners, she clearly found him wanting. Big surprise. For some reason, a man who’d spent the better part of his youth in the tropics was somehow supposed to be tall, fair and perfectly at ease in social situations—in other words, a younger version of his father.

  It was the idea of Dr. Jared Fine that people loved. Never the real man.

  “That’s me,” Jared said casually. He checked his watch, the unspoken signal that he had more important things to do than chat about hospital privileges and bureaucracy. “Dr. Vidra and I are about to head into surgery. Can this wait?”

  “Oh, I didn’t hear my name included in the roll call.” Whitney backed away, smirking as she held her hands up. She felt the same way he did about red tape. Ball it up, set it on fire and toss it like a Molotov cocktail. “I’m going to see how the prep is coming along.” She dashed away before Jared could protest.

  He didn’t bother smiling at the woman left behind. “Yes?”

  “You’re a hard man to pin down,” she said. “I’ve been trying to call your office for weeks now.”

  Jared swallowed tightly. He’d only been getting two kinds of phone calls for weeks that he’d failed to respond to. The first belonged to the man who’d sired him. The second belonged to a persistent representative from Make the World Smile. A persistent representative who sounded an awful lot like this woman, now that he thought about it.

  “Maybe I’ve been hard to pin down because I don’t wish to be caught,” he said, attempting to be light. Based on the way the woman took a step back, he was guessing his attempt fell flat. Swallowing a sigh, he added, “I’m sorry. Is there something I can help you with?”

  He pressed the elevator button as she reached into her oversized purse.

  “Yes, there is.” The woman pulled out a thick envelope and handed it to him. “Your exit paperwork, Dr. Fine. We meant to give you this in person, but you missed your final interview.”

  He had no choice but to take the proffered papers. It had been cowardly of him to resign from Make the World Smile without going through the formal exit interview, but the last thing he’d wanted at the time was to sit in a room of his peers and face their shared disappointment at his decision to leave.

  Especially since his decision at the time had hinged on no future plans other than a nebulous desire to join a group of friends at a medical spa in upstate Pennsylvania. Friends, he might add, who he hadn’t seen in over a decade and who hadn’t invited him. How did one put that into words? Yes, it’s been an incredible experience. Yes, I’ve breathed, eaten, slept and bled this organization for most of my adult life. But I’d like to go do nose jobs now. Thanks so much for the opportunity.

  He’d tried once to hint at how difficult it was, being the man in charge, never living in one place for longer than six months at a time. How lonely it was. He didn’t laugh out there in the field. He didn’t cry either. Every day found him facing humanity at its best and its worst—and in the scope of such a vast expanse between the two, he’d somehow gotten lost.

  When he’d mentioned his desire to step down a few years ago, all they’d done was give him a pat on the back, a bigger team and a front page spread. And he’d accepted it as the ego-stroking bribery it was. Tendering his resignation this time around had taken every scrap of resolve he had left.

  “It won’t bite you,” the woman said, breaking his thoughts. “Take your time looking it over. I’ll be in touch in a few days.”

  “You couldn’t mail it?”

  She laughed. “I was told to place those papers in your hands or die trying—I wasn’t kidding about how hard it is to get hold of you. By the way, my name’s Paula. Paula Forks. If you have any questions, feel free to give me a call at the number listed on the front page.”

  He held the paperwork at arm’s length, dread beginning to overtake him. “Is this a summons?”

  Paula laughed as the elevator dinged. “May I?” she asked, indicating the waiting doors. She didn’t allow him to respond. “I think you might be laboring under a misapprehension. Which floor?”

  “Six,” he said helplessly. “What do you mean misapprehension?”

  “The organization is well aware of your reputation and your contributions. We don’t want to punish you. We want you back. What’s inside that envelope is an offer.”

  As he was now officially trapped in the elevator with Paula, he couldn’t help but note that the woman looked supremely satisfied with herself. It wasn’t a good look. Few people could make that work to their advantage. Gretchen, for example, was one of the lucky ones. When she got the better of him—which was surprisingly often—she had a way of making him feel ten feet tall and like the smallest man in the world. And she did it with a kind of happy glow that made him long to sweep her into his arms and reward her with a kiss.

  It had to be some kind of magic trick.

  The elevator doors opened just in time, and he practically leaped out. “Look—I wasn’t kidding about the surgery thing. Can we do this at a later date?”

  “That depends. Will you answer my calls this time?”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Jared saw Whitney turn the corner. She’d already changed into scrubs and had the calm, content look of a woman about to get elbows deep in someone’s skin. Oh, how he wanted even a fraction of that calm and contentment.

  “Fine. Yes. Call the office and we’ll set up a meeting.”

  “Do you promise this time?”

  As loath as he was to commit to a meeting until he had time to look over what was in his hands, he really did have work to do. “Of course.”

  A smile worked across Paula’s face. “Excellent. And Dr. Fine—don’t wait too long to open that envelope. I think you’ll like what you see.”

  That showed what she knew. As far as Jared was concerned, the only thing he wanted to see right now more than the inside of an operating room was a slightly unhinged young woman with a black eye, mocking lips and a snake tattoo.

  Her he would have torn into right away.

  * * *

  “She’s not here. You can’t come in.” Gretchen stepped in the front doorway, using her body as a shield against her oldest sister’s impending attack. For all the good it would do.

  Janice had a decade, half a foot and about forty pounds on her—and she wasn’t against using force. When Gran had first offered to cover Gretchen’s tuition costs for culinary school, Janice had actually come by the house and staged some kind of sit-in protest on the front lawn until they disclosed the details of the financial arrangements.

  “Of course I can come in. You don’t own the place, Gretchen. She’s as much my grandmother as she is yours.”

  “Out of the question.” Although she held various positions as the caretaker of Gran, Gretchen’s primary job was simple: never let the family in. She might be a degenerate in every other area of her life, but she could at least save the woman from a collection of people who seemed to care only when their own interests were on the line.

  G
retchen slammed the door shut behind her and, with a triumphant look at her foe, tossed her keys into the shrubbery extending all along one side of the house.

  It would take weeks to find those keys. If there was one thing more unwieldy and ornate than the house itself, it was the yard. Gran liked things a lot more than she liked people, which meant the two-acre park surrounding the house was filled with prickly, overgrown rose bushes and what was once a shrub maze and weathervanes and a dried-up pond and a white trellis gazebo and about five water fountains in various states of disrepair.

  Simply put, it was a mess.

  “How mature, Gretchen. Now you can’t get in either.”

  Gretchen surveyed her sister with wide, innocent eyes. Here was where those forty pounds and six inches really changed things. She could shimmy in through the basement window or climb the trellis to the attic. Janice—who had settled into a stodgy, triumphant middle age and loved nothing more than to rub Gretchen’s face in it—was only getting in if she bashed down the door.

  “Just give me your message, and I’ll be sure she gets it,” Gretchen said sweetly. “She might actually listen this time. She always likes you better when you don’t bring the Terror Twins with you.”

  “For your information, I’m not here to see her. I’m here to see you.” Janice smiled tightly. “And please don’t call them the Terror Twins. You know we’re trying to build them an environment of positive self-esteem.”

  “The only way they could have higher self-esteem would be if their last names were Kardashian.” Gretchen had liked her nieces well enough when they were kids—cute and playful and always happy to see their youngest aunt at dance recitals. She’d stopped getting invitations to the recitals a few years ago when Janice decided her bad influence was the cause of their transformation to difficult-to-manage teenagers. Gretchen rather thought their overbearing, judgmental parents were the real bad influence, but no one asked her.

  “People who think well of themselves go on to do great things,” Janice said in a tight voice. “Instead of taking advantage of an old woman and robbing an entire family of their rightful inheritance.”